Coventry were on course for victory at Ashton Gate until substitute David Clarkson pounced seven minutes from time to wipe out David Bell’s stunning opener, and Coleman admitted: “It was disappointing after getting so close to three points.

"But that’s three games unbeaten against three tough teams now and it moves us up the table.

"People will probably say that it wasn’t a very pretty 90 minutes but we ended up with a valuable away point and I prefer that to us losing 1-0 or 2-1 and being told that we were unlucky because we played some great football.

“That’s no good to us – you need to have that base of doggedness and grittiness if you’re going to progress.”

Coleman wasn’t 100-per-cent satisfied with his side’s defensive efforts: “We created problems for ourselves with a couple of back passes and we shot ourselves in the foot with their goal.

“They pumped a lot of high balls into our box and in the main we coped well with that but then we knocked off and they punished us for it.

"But we steadied ourselves after that – there was nothing too scary and we might have nicked it ourselves.

“You’ve always got half a chance if you’ve got 11 players who are prepared to graft and our workrate was excellent, especially from the two strikers.

"They were up against three centre-halves so they had to put in a lot of unselfish running off the ball.